Attitude

Attitudes are evaluations people make about objects, ideas, events, or other people. Attitudes can be positive or negative. Explicit attitudes are conscious beliefs that can guide decisions and behavior. Implicit attitudes are unconscious beliefs that can still influence decisions and behavior. Attitudes can include up to three components: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.

• An Emotional Component: How the object, person, issue or event makes you feel.
• A Cognitive Component: Your thoughts and beliefs about the subject.
• A Behavioral Component: How the attitude influences your behavior.

Example: Jane believes that smoking is unhealthy, feels disgusted when people smoke around her, and avoids being in situations where people smoke.

Dimensions of Attitudes

Researchers study three dimensions of attitude: strength, accessibility, and ambivalence.

• Attitude strength: Strong attitudes are those that are firmly held and that highly influence behavior. Attitudes that are important to a person tend to be strong. Attitudes that people have a vested interest in also tend to be strong. Furthermore, people tend to have stronger attitudes about things, events, ideas, or people they have considerable knowledge and information about.
• Attitude accessibility: The accessibility of an attitude refers to the ease with which it comes to mind. In general, highly accessible attitudes tend to be stronger.
• Attitude ambivalence: Ambivalence of an attitude refers to the ratio of positive and negative evaluations that make up that attitude. The ambivalence of an attitude increases as the positive and negative evaluations get more and more equal.

How Do Attitudes Form?

Attitudes form directly as a result of experience. They may emerge due to direct personal experience, or they may result from observation. Social roles and social norms can have a strong influence on attitudes. Social roles relate to how people are expected to behave in a particular role or context. Social norms involve society's rules for what behaviors are considered appropriate.Even over all socialisation processes of an individual helps in formation of attitudes.

Attitudes can be learned in a variety of ways. Consider how advertisers use classical conditioning  to influence your attitude toward a particular product by making associations between two stimuli. In a television commercial, you see young, beautiful people having fun in on a tropical beach while enjoying a sport drink. This attractive and appealing imagery causes you to develop a positive association with this particular beverage.

Operantconditioningcan also be used to influence how attitudes develop. Imagine a young man who has just started smoking. Whenever he lights up a cigarette, people complain, chastise him and ask him to leave their vicinity. This negative feedback from those around him eventually causes him to develop an unfavorable opinion of smoking and he decides to give up the habit.Thus rewards and punishments helps in formation of attitudes

Finally, people also learn attitudes by observing the people around them. When someone you admire greatly espouses a particular attitude, you are more likely to develop the same beliefs. For example, children spend a great deal of time observing the attitudes of their parents and usually begin to demonstrate similar outlooks.

Even exposure to information leads to formation of attitudes. Many things which we learn through books or information we receive through media influences in formation of  our attitudes.

Factors Influencing Formation Of Attitudes-

• Family and school environment
• Reference groups
• Personal experiences
• Media related influences

The Function of Attitudes

Attitudes can serve functions for the individual. Daniel Katz (1960) outlines four functional areas:

Knowledge

Attitudes provide meaning (knowledge) for life.  The knowledge function refers to our need for a world which is consistent and relatively stable. 

This allows us to predict what is likely to happen, and so gives us a sense of control. Attitudes can help us organize and structure our experience. 

Knowing a person’s attitude helps us predict their behavior. For example, knowing that a person is religious we can predict they will go to Church.

Self / Ego-expressive

The attitudes we express (1) help communicate who we are and (2) may make us feel good because we have asserted our identity.  Self-expression of attitudes can be non-verbal too: think bumper sticker, cap, or T-shirt slogan. 

Therefore, our attitudes are part of our identify, and help us to be aware through the expression of our feelings, beliefs and values.

Adaptive

If a person holds and/or expresses socially acceptable attitudes, other people will reward them with approval and social acceptance. 

For example, when people flatter their bosses or instructors (and believe it) or keep silent if they think an attitude is unpopular.  Again, expression can be nonverbal [think politician kissing baby]. 

Attitudes then, are to do with being apart of a social group and the adaptive functions helps us fit in with a social group. People seek out others who share their attitudes, and develop similar attitudes to those they like.

Ego-defensive

The ego-defensive function refers to holding attitudes that protectour self-esteem or that justify actions that make us feel guilty.  For example, one way children might defend themselves against the feelings of humiliation they have experienced in P.E. lessons is to adopt a strongly negative attitude to all sports.

People whose pride have suffered following a defeat in sport might similarly adopt a defensive attitude: “I’m not bothered, I’m sick of rugby anyway…”.  This function has psychiatric overtones.  Positive attitudes towards ourselves, for example, have a protective function (i.e. an ego-defensive role) in helping us reserve our self-image.

The basic idea behind the functional approach is that attitudes help a person to mediate between their own inner needs (expression, defense) and the outside world (adaptive and knowledge).

The basic idea behind the functional approach is that attitudes help a person to mediate between their own inner needs (expression, defense) and the outside world (adaptive and knowledge).

Functions of Attitudes Example

Imagine you are very patriotic about being British.  This might cause you to have an ethnocentric attitude towards everything not British.  Imagine further that you are with a group of like-minded friends. You say:

“Of course, there’s no other country as good as Britain to live in.  Other places are alright in their own way, but they can’t compare with your mother county.”

(There are nods of approval all round. You are fitting in – adaptive).  The people in the group are wearing England football shirts (This is the self-expression function).

Then imagine you go on to say:

“The trouble with foreigners is that they don’t speak English.  I went to France last year and they were ignorant. Even if they could speak our language they wouldn’t do so.  I call that unfriendly.

(Others agree with you and tell you of their similar experiences.  You are making sense of things. This is the knowledge function).  Then someone who has never travelled takes things a stage further…

“I don’t mind foreigners coming here on holiday…but they shouldn’t be allowed to live here….taking our jobs and living off social security. Britain for the British is what I say….why is it getting so you can’t get a decent job in your own country.”

The Influence Of Attitudes On Behavior

Behavior does not always reflect attitudes. However, attitudes do determine behavior in some situations:

• If there are few outside influences, attitude guides behavior.
• Behavior is guided by attitudes specific to that behavior.
• Behavior is guided by attitudes that come to mind easily.

The Influence of Behavior on Attitudes

Behavior also affects attitudes. Evidence for this comes from the foot-in-the-door phenomenon and the effect of role playing.

The Foot-in-the-Door Phenomenon

People tend to be more likely to agree to a difficult request if they have first agreed to an easy one. This is called the foot-in-the-door phenomenon.

Example:Amar is more likely to let an acquaintance borrow her laptop for a day if he first persuades her to let him borrow her textbook for a day.

Social Norms And Social Roles

Social norms are a society’s rules about appropriate behavior. Norms exist for practically every kind of situation. Some norms are explicit and are made into laws, such as the norm While driving, you may not run over a pedestrian. Other norms are implicit and are followed unconsciously, such as You may not wear a bikini to class.

Social roles are patterns of behavior that are considered appropriate for a person in a particular context. For example, gender roles tell people how a particular society expects men and women to behave. A person who violates the requirements of a role tends to feel uneasy or to be censured by others. Role requirements can change over time in a society.

The Effect Of Role Playing And The “Prison Study”

People tend to internalize roles they play, changing their attitudes to fit the roles. In the 1970s, the psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted a famous study called the prison study, which showed how roles influence people. Zimbardo assigned one group of college student volunteers to play the role of prison guards in a simulated prison environment. He provided these students with uniforms, clubs, and whistles and told them to enforce a set of rules in the prison. He assigned another group of students to play the role of prisoners. Zimbardo found that as time went on, some of the “guard” students became increasingly harsh and domineering. The “prisoner” students also internalized their role. Some broke down, while others rebelled or became passively resigned to the situation. The internalization of roles by the two groups of students was so extreme that Zimbardo had to terminate the study after only six days.

Attitude and Behaviour link

Generally individuals show behaviours according to their attitudes .Attitudes are considered as guides for various behaviours . But various studies like La Piere studies indicate that individual can show behaviour contrary to their attitudes.Their are some factors which determine attitude behaviourlinks.These are:

• Social context and social consequences of behaviour
• Awareness and accessability of attitudes
• lack of external pressure
• person’s behaviour is not evaluated by others
• person himself thinks that his behaviour would have positive consequence
• Attitude’s Influence And Relation With Thought And Behaviour

Difference between Attitude and Behaviour:

Attitude and behaviour are closely related but they are two different concepts. Following differences can be observed between both:

Attitude is internal whereas behaviour is external. In other words, behaviour can very well be seen by others as it is external whereas attitude is shelled within the mind of the individual and hence cannot be seen by others immediately.

Attitude is what you think whereas behavior is what you do. Attitude has to do with the mind whereas behavior has a lot to do with actions.

Attitude is thought-oriented whereas behavior is action-oriented. Attitude can shape the behavior of a person. A person with the right attitude may be with right behavior too. But sometimes people act in accordance with their attitudes, and other times they act in ways that are quite inconsistent with their attitudes.

Attitude is all about the opinion somebody has about something in life. Behavior is about how one responds to the impulsion and the pulls of the environment. This response can be shaped by the attitude of the person.

It is possible to judge one’s attitude through one’s behavior though attitude is not visible externally. One can say that someone has a good attitude towards poor. It is evident from the person’s behavior. Hence attitude and behavior are related in some sense though they are two different concepts.

Is there a relation between attitude and behaviour?

During the early 1930s, La Piere conducted what has become probably the most widely cited study of the attitude–behavior relation. While traveling across the western United States in the company of a Chinese couple, La Piere stopped at more than 200 hotels and restaurants. The Chinese couple was refused service at only one establishment. Some 6 months later, La Piere wrote to the proprietor of each of the hotels and restaurants and asked whether the establishment served Chinese guests. Surprisingly, 92% of those who responded indicated that they did not accommodate Chinese guests. Thus, there was a startling inconsistency between the attitude responses to La Piere’s letter and the actual behavior toward the Chinese couple with whom La Piere had travelled.

A very similar study concerning an African American guest, instead of Chinese guests, also observed much discrepancy between people’s reports of their attitudes and their actual behavior.

Although it cannot be denied that a large number of studies suggest that attitudes do not influence behavior, sometimes attitudes do predict behavior. For example, studies of voting behavior consistently have indicated a substantial relation between preelection attitudes and voting. Basically, people vote for the candidates they like.

Research has revealed everything from findings of no relation whatsoever  to the nearly perfect relation observed.

Thus, the answer to the question “Is there a relation between attitudes and behavior?” is a resounding “sometimes.” Given the range of findings, it becomes apparent that the question of attitude–behavior consistency has to be approached differently: Rather than asking whether attitudes relate to behavior, we have to ask, “Under what conditions do what kinds of attitudes of what kinds of individuals predict what kinds of behavior?” We need to treat the strength of the attitude–behavior relation as we would treat any other dependent variable and determine what factors affect it.